Well, this has to be printed to give everyone a laugh. Khatami stresses promoting culture

Tehran, Aug 16 - President Mohammad Khatami here on Saturday underscored the need to promote culture, arts, science and intellectualism in order to build a world free from war and discrimination.

Khatami, in a message to the first international congress of ancient cultural ties in Iran and West Asia, stressed that today's world needs kindness and friendship more than before, and that the world is already tired of wars and conflicts.

"And to satisfy this real need, the culture and science must be promoted," he said in the message that was read by his advisor Hadi Khaniki.

Khatami said the Iranian plateau has been keeping a treasure of mankind's oldest civilizations, stressing that cultural ties, traditions and myths are still connected to each other in this part of the world.

"People's traditions in the Iranian plateau are connected to each other in such a way that the beautiful manifestation of their spiritual co-existence is just as charming as the manifestation of their joint struggles to overcome the elements of nature and to develop trade and industry," he wrote in the message.

Khatami called Iran `the land of kindness,' and said the spirit of tolerance, dialogue, affection, and wisdom has always been obvious in the efforts of the Iranian nation throughout the history.

"This ancient spirit cannot and should not be looked for only in history. Rather,the modern manifestations of this spirit should be explored in the cultural life of today's world," he said.

"Whoever wants to make a world free from wars, animosity and discrimination should struggle to promote arts, culture and intellectualism before political issues, and our ancestors were the pioneers in that struggle."